Aviation market gains strong growth in first half

Vietnam’s aviation market has returned to the double-digit growth path of the pre-recession period after seeing its strong momentum reduced to a single-digit rate in the tough year of 2009 for the global airline industry.

The Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) on Monday estimated that the country’s overall aviation market underwent a year-on-year increase of some 20 percent in the number of air travel passengers in the first half of this year.

CAAV based its projection for the first half on the strong growth recorded in the January-May period although the total number of passengers on domestic flights and those international services to and from Vietnam in the first half has not been released.

Vo Huy Cuong, director of CAAV’s Air Transport Department, told the Daily that nearly 8.5 million passengers went through the country’s all airports in the first five months of this year, up 20 percent compared on the year-ago period.

Figures of the general Statistical Office showed the number of passengers aboard international flights to Vietnam was just over two million out of the more than 2.51 million international visitors in the first half, a rise of 29.2 percent over the year-earlier period.

In June alone, the number of international air travel passengers edged up 8.3 percent month-on-month but 38.7 percent year-on-year to over 295,700, sustaining a double-digit gain in the six consecutive months of 2010.

Cuong attributed the steady growth in the first half to continuing strong expansion of the domestic segment backed by flagship carrier Vietnam Airlines’ flight frequency increase and launch of new services in the period.

Vietnam Airlines said it had inaugurated eight more domestic routes in the year to date, bringing the carrier’s number of domestic routes to 35 and covering 20 destinations across the country.

Cuong said Vietnam Airlines and its subsidiary Vietnam Air Service Co. (Vasco) still took the lion’s share of around 80 percent in the domestic market and the rest by Jetstar Pacific. This Vietnamese low-cost carrier started to fly the new route linking Hanoi and Nha Trang, and two daily services between Hanoi and Danang instead of one from June till September 5 this year.

Two private carriers VietJet Air and Mekong Air plan to join the domestic market in the fourth quarter of this year. More domestic services and a significant increase in international visitor arrivals lead CAAV to hope that Vietnam’s overall aviation market will grow 20 percent for all of 2010, or higher than the 14 percent it had projected earlier for this year.

CAAV documents indicated the country’s average aviation market expanded 13.3 percent in the 2002-2007 period and 15.7 percent in 2008, when the local market had not been impacted much by the world’s air travel demand slump.

In mid-2009, CAAV expected 29 million passengers would go through all the airports in Vietnam in 2010 and 47 million  including 29 million domestic guests  in 2015. But, this expectation has turned out to be too ambitious because of the global economic downturn.

Tags: Vietnam aviation, Vietnam aviation industry, Vietnam aviation market